PSYCHO (1998) | Copied Hitchcock Shot For Shot. What Went Wrong? (Low)

Impossibile aggiungere al carrello

Puoi avere soltanto 50 titoli nel carrello per il checkout.

Riprova più tardi

Rimozione dalla Lista desideri non riuscita.

Riprova più tardi

Non è stato possibile aggiungere il titolo alla Libreria

Per favore riprova

Non è stato possibile seguire il Podcast

Per favore riprova

Esecuzione del comando Non seguire più non riuscita

PSYCHO (1998) | Copied Hitchcock Shot For Shot. What Went Wrong? (Low)

Ascolta gratuitamente

Vedi i dettagli del titolo

Offerte di stagione | 0,99 €/mese per i primi 3 mesi

A seguire 9,99 €/mese – si applicano condizioni. Puoi disdire mensilmente.

We went Low on Psycho (1998), and not in a fun, “this is secretly fascinating” way. This might be the most frustrating Low we have covered, because Gus Van Sant’s Psycho is not just a bad remake. It is a remake that keeps copying the body of Alfred Hitchcock’s Psycho while missing the soul. The problem is not that remakes are automatically inferior. Some of the best genre movies ever made are remakes. The problem is that this movie breaks the one rule a remake has to follow: add something without taking away what already worked. That is the central argument of the episode. Everything this version attempts to add, from color to extra shock imagery to Norman Bates masturbating at the peephole, actively makes the original feel smarter by comparison. It copies Hitchcock’s choices while removing the reasons those choices mattered. In this episode, we talk about Psycho, directed by Gus Van Sant and released in 1998, as one of the strangest remake experiments in studio history. This is the infamous almost shot-for-shot remake of Psycho (1960), now in color, set in the late ’90s, and starring Vince Vaughn as Norman Bates, Anne Heche as Marion Crane, Viggo Mortensen as Sam Loomis, Julianne Moore as Lila Crane, William H. Macy as Arbogast, and Robert Forster as the psychiatrist. We start by making something clear: remakes are not the problem. John Carpenter’s The Thing, David Cronenberg’s The Fly, and different versions of Invasion of the Body Snatchers prove that remakes can be brilliant when a filmmaker has a new angle, a new nightmare, or a new reason to revisit the material. But Psycho (1998) does not feel like a movie with a new idea. It feels like a post-Good Will Hunting vanity experiment that somehow became a major studio release. There are a few highs, and we give the movie credit where we can. The casting is at least interesting. Viggo Mortensen as Sam Loomis is probably an improvement over the original version of the character. Making Sam more rugged, blue collar, and believable as a hardware store owner gives him a little more texture. Anne Heche is also better than her Razzie nomination suggests. In the early scenes, she finds a way to take the original dialogue and make it feel more modern, sharper, and less melodramatic. Her Marion has a harder edge, which makes sense for a late-’90s version of the character. We also liked Robert Forster as the psychiatrist. In the original Psycho, the psychiatrist explanation at the end is one of the weakest parts of the movie because it goes on too long and feels too theatrical. Forster plays it much cleaner, faster, and flatter, almost like he is reading the facts instead of performing a lecture. That is one of the few places where the remake finds a small way to improve a specific piece of the original. The opening shot is another technical high. Hitchcock wanted to move from the city into a hotel room in a way that 1960 technology could not fully support. Van Sant can actually execute that idea more fluidly. We also noticed the little detail of the fly buzzing in the opening hotel room, which creates a subtle bookend with the ending and Mother’s “I wouldn’t even harm a fly.” That is the kind of addition that works: small, connected, non-destructive. But then the movie gets to the Bates Motel, and the whole thing starts falling apart. The first major problem is the decision to shoot in color. Hitchcock could have used color in 1960, but black and white was a defining part of Psycho’s visual identity. Removing it means the remake needs a new visual idea, and Van Sant seems to land on green: green dress, green sheets, green credits, green everywhere. But what does it actually mean? Greed? Envy? Rot? Money? The movie keeps underlining the color without turning it into a real idea. Then there is Vince Vaughn as Norman Bates, which becomes one of the episode’s biggest debates. We respect the swing. Coming off Swingers, it is interesting that Vaughn wanted to show another side of himself. He can play nervous, awkward, wounded, and strange. But physically, he feels wrong for Norman. He is too tall, too imposing, too capable of overwhelming the room. Norman Bates should not look like he could reach across a desk and fold Sam Loomis in half. The parlor scene shows the problem most clearly. In Hitchcock’s version, the scene works because of stillness and restraint. Anthony Perkins hides Norman’s rage under politeness. Van Sant moves the camera, and Vaughn plays the scene more aggressively. Suddenly, Marion does not seem like she has had a revealing conversation with a troubled man. She seems like she wants to get out of the room before he kills her. The biggest Low, hands down, is the peephole scene. In the original, Norman watching Marion is disturbing because of implication: voyeurism, repression, shame, desire, control. Van Sant turns the implication into text by showing Norman masturbating while watching her. We hated it, not ...

Ancora nessuna recensione